Kinda cool

A quick trip to Hyderabad on Monday, two flights in one day = happy exhaustion and a brand new Persian passport.
SO weird to see myself all scarfed-out in the photo page, next to stamps from the very gracious Iranian consul and that lovely Persian script I can only hope to be able to actually read one day. They've done some kind of fabulous photoshop on the image - making my eyes appear very, very blue and my lips and cheeks a natural soft pink that I really don't remember as having graced my visage the day the photo was taken. I'm flattered and wonder why we don't do the same in the U.S. for driver's licenses and the like.

I am now, for all intents and purposes, both American and Iranian. No small thing considering the increasingly tense political relationship between the two nations.

The passport, a lovely deep reddish brown color opens and reads right to left, as all Persian books do, and has it's pinkish pages graced by a very faint watermark of the face of Imam Khomeini inside an ornate star pattern - like the middle of a delicately designed Persian carpet. It's quite pretty, actually - and evokes the same feelings of potential adventure and excitement my own United States passport did when I first received it, brand new and a bit stiff.

Now, we've just to figure out exactly how I'm meant to travel around with the two passports - naturally the majority of my travel stamps will go into the American passport, which had become so full it was annotated with an extra 25 or so pages while we were at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi last year. But the question of with which passport do I stamp in and out of various countries before and after a visit to Iran remains. I know there are loads of people with dual citizenship (and a relative collection of passports) happily cruising around from country to country without issue - I've just got to figure out the protocol.

The passport, which expires after the normal five year period extended to any Iranian passport, allows my unfettered travel to and from Iran - no more visas to apply for or extend. No concern for the American-ness of me getting in the way of enjoying the other half of our family at will. This is a freedom for which I am eternally grateful.

It will be interesting to see if my own country is as forthcoming with a passport for my darling Iranian husband.
We can only hope for the best.